World War II Bomb Revisits Past

World War II Bomb Revisits Past

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World War II Bomb Revisits Past

The Christian's duty to promote peace is now.

Rachel Stone/ June 4, 2010

I am an American living in the town in Germany where a bomb from World War II detonated 3 days ago, killing three people. Last week, my husband Tim came home early from his regular Thursday pick-up game of basketball at the university sports center here in Gottingen, Germany. I was puzzled to see him; I'd expected him to be much later, and he explained the reason for his premature return: "They found a bomb from World War II near the sports center where they're doing some construction, and everyone had to leave the building." This seemed bizarre; we hadn't realized that thousands of leftover bombs still litter Germany—they're usually found and deactivated without incident. I didn't give it much further thought.

My father spent nearly three years as a "cold-warrior" at Hahn Air Base in west-central Germany in the mid-1970s. As an SP (special police) he guarded bombs—lots of very big and potentially very destructive bombs. He never saw combat, spending most of his time in Germany living off the military base, learning German, disco dancing, and flirting with German girls. At the same time, he became something of a military history buff, eagerly absorbing World War II history, and—being a guy with lots of Jewish girlfriends in his past and a fascination with Judaism—he also studied the Holocaust and visited former concentration camps. Later, back in the States, he re-met and married one of those former Jewish girlfriends, and they had me.

Though both my parents are practicing Christians, they were eager for me to have a sense of Jewish identity. They taught me to say the Shema in Hebrew ("Hear, O Israel, the LORD is G-d; the LORD is One"). They had me baptized—but in Israel, in the Sea of Galilee. ...

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